You may or may not be aware that I’ve been spending a fair bit of time on Twitter lately. This began as a work exercise – “what’s the point of this then?” – but has become something more as my enthusiasm has grown.[…]

This video for The Fall’s “Wings” (embedding sadly disabled or I’d post it direct) is not only a rare promo of one of their finest songs, it’s also a forensic examination of a pub in 1983. Perhaps even the kind of pub Ma[…]

To read the story, click here; to read about our ‘hauntography’ project, click here.
“See that space between the panels? That’s what comics aficionados have named “The Gutter!” And despite its unceremonious title, the […]

Another round of the Top 40 singles as seen through the lens of Twitter (previous instalment here). Rules: I take (roughly) the most recent substantive comment about each track, searching for title first then artist. The result? A snapshot of what th[…]

We resurrect I Was A Goblin to bring you a link to this visionary post: “Personal Branding is a Real Life RPG”.
“Every person on this planet is playing the same game as you – the game of life. We are the ones who realize this […]

Having spent a fair chunk of my blogging time yesterday talking about rating scales, this Financial Times piece came as an eye-opener.
“Practice does not help. Neither, surprisingly, does varying the gaps in the scale: it’s no easier to disti[…]

Here’s a post from Hitsville raising an interesting point about Metacritic scores. The case looks pretty clear-cut: movie critics are harsher and more discerning than music ones.
Harsher, yes. More discerning? Well. Allow me to get all research[…]

An extraordinary passage in Huizinga’s The Waning Of The Middle Ages comes to our attention:
The taste for unbridled luxury culminated in the court fetes….Nothing could be more insipid or ugly than the ‘entremets’, consisting[…]

We’re back, and we’ve taken advantage of the unscheduled interruption to improve the site a bit.
Here’s what you might notice:
– a streamlined new design: still pink, but a bit less garish and using the space we’ve got r[…]

Hi readers – we’re aware that the FT server has been erratic at best today if you’re accessing it via the site. We’re looking into this. Apologies, especially to any new readers who came looking for us after the MacCauley And […]